Megan McCardle: What if we simply raised taxes enough to cover the deficit?

We keep being told that we don't have a government problem, we have a tax problem.  If we simply taxed the 'rich' we would be fine.  Megan McCardle goes through just what it would take to cover our Federal deficit.  Which goes a long way towards explaining why it won't happen.  Hattip instapundit.

Yesterday I argued that simply covering our medium-term fiscal problems with tax hikes was not going to be easy or relatively painless; we’d have to go back to the Clinton era tax rates, and then hike rates again by at least a third, possibly more. Today Kevin Drum responds that this doesn’t seem so bad. . . . Of course it depends on how we implement such a hike. But looking just at the federal income tax makes no sense. In order to raise taxes to the 25% of GDP that Kevin wants, all taxes need to rise by at least a third, not just income taxes: excise taxes, corporate income taxes, payroll taxes. And we’re talking about rising from the Clinton level, not from the current effective tax rate level. That’s going to be a lot more than 5%. . . . n other words, for the poorest 20% of Americans (who make less than $20,000 a year, with an average income of $11,500), taxes go from about $660 to about $1320. For the middle quintile (making an average of $50,000 a year), taxes go from around $7,000 to over $12,000. For those in the top quintile, with an average income of $167,000, taxes jump from a $41,000 to $62,000.

Turn it around and look at the effect on incomes: after tax incomes drop from $10,840 to $10,180, in the lowest quintile; from $43,000 to $38,500 in the middle quintile; and from$125,000 to $105,000.